The Shogun’s Treasure *** A Deadly Search *** A Buried Secret

In the final days of the Shogunate, as civil war threatens to engulf Japan, the Shogun’s Naval and Finance Minister takes a desperate action: he reportedly hides a massive cache of gold in the remote north of the main island to keep it from the rebels. Captured and beheaded, his secret vanishes, and historians dismiss it as a fanciful myth. But they are wrong. Very wrong.

To turn the tide of war, a friend of the Shogun enlists Tomita Yuki, a young samurai, to travel to America and purchase 10,000 Spencer repeating rifles—the same weapons used by Union forces in the Civil War. At his side: Major Butler, a retired U.S. Army officer who was a Shogunate military advisor, and Mary, Butler’s bold and determined niece. But a deadly betrayal threatens everything, and their mission spirals into disaster, and their story disappears—until more than a century and a half later.

In modern-day California, insurance fraud detective Parker West discovers Tomita Yuki’s Japanese diary in his late parents’ attic. He also finds a gleaming 1858 U.S. $20 gold coin.

Drawn into a mystery spanning continents and over 150 years, Parker teams up with Japanese-American historian Jason Tanaka and his brilliant niece, Terry. Together, they follow Yuki’s elusive clues—deadly clues.

The gold is real. The danger is present. And the past is anything but buried.